its influence directly on God. His death was generally spoken of as a
satisfaction to divine justice, or as an expedient for harmonizing the
divine attributes, or maintaining the principles of the divine
government. God was represented as being placed in a difficulty,--as
being unable to gratify His love in forgiving men on their repenting and
turning to Him, without violating His justice and His truth, and putting
in peril the principles of His government. There were several other
theological theories of the design or object of the death of Christ. All
these theories may be true in a certain sense. They may, perhaps, be so
explained as to make them harmonize with the teachings of Scripture. But
I found none of them in the Bible. I found multitudes of passages which
represented the death and sufferings of Christ as intended to influence
men, but not one that taught any of the theological theories,--hardly
one that even seemed to do so. Here again I took the Scripture
representations, and allowed the theological ones to slide.

There was a hymn which said of Christ, 'Our debt He has paid, and our
work He has done.' I could find nothing in Scripture about the Saviour
paying our debt, or doing our work. I could find passages which taught
that our debts or sins might be _forgiven_, on our return to God. So far
were the Scriptures from teaching that Christ had done our work, that
they represented Him as coming into the world to fit us to do it
ourselves,--as redeeming us and creating us anew that we might be
zealous of good works.

I could find nothing in Scripture to countenance the common notion about
the efficacy of the death-bed repentances of old, wilful, hardened
sinners. The Bible left on my mind the impression that 'whatsoever a man
soweth, that shall he also reap.'